Friday, February 28, 2003

Thursday night dinner was like a pot luck through time.  I made the Salade de Moules, Mussels Marinated in Oil and Herbs, and Julies past brought the lamb, and the gnocchi, and the potato gratin with tomatoes and anchovies.  And you know how pot lucks generally don’t work so well, and you end up with ten pans of brownies, four bowls of fruit salad, and some dorito chips?  It was kind of like that.  But the situation rooms had detected critical hot spots in both the financial and the refrigerator-space arenas, so there you have it. This lost wallet nonsense has also continued to louse things up, because it has reduced to a nullity my access to funds.  I’m dependent upon my husband’s pursestrings at the moment, it’s an archaic kind of a feeling.  I forgot to get money from him in the morning and so had to get him to bring the cookbook from home, make a list from the recipe I told him I’d be doing, and buy the stuff.  He came home with a bag of mussels, some lemons and some shallots, as well as a bar of Lindt dark chocolate, because my husband kicks ass, either that or he’s fattening me up for the slaughter.  I guess the two things are not mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, we didn’t confab closely on the shopping list, and so a couple of mistakes were made.  First off, Eric just assumed we had vermouth, as well he might, since we’ve had this big honkin’ bottle of the stuff around forever.  But alas I had used the last of it, let’s see, I think about a week before.  Eric pointed out he probably still had some in his Misto©, a cute little contraption for alcoholics that just sprays a touch of vermouth into your martini glass, but since I needed two cups of the stuff to boil the mussels, I declined his kind offer.  Also, there was no way that Eric could have known that I had thrown away the parsley he’d bought the night before when I came upon it in the morning, left out all night, wilted and sad.  So were shy a couple of ingredients, here.  No matter – the Julie/Julia Project is about nothing if not ingenuity and pluck. I picked out the open-shelled mussels.  There were quite a lot of them, but I thought I had enough good ones to go.  The good ones I was putting in a bowl.  As I was coming to the end of mussel selection, I looked over, and goddammit, my mussels were opening up! “My mussels are opening up!” I cried. Eric came and looked on sympathetically as I returned to hastily choosing mussels, throwing them in the bowl.  After I’d thrown a few in, he says: “Huh.  That’s weird.” “What?” I looked back in the bowl.  Lo and behold, all the mussels had shut up again.  Funky. Okay, so I had no vermouth, or white wine, so I used Madeira.  What could happen?  I boil the Madeira for a couple of minutes with shallots, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, butter, and no parsley.  I threw in the mussels and boiled for five minutes, until they swung open.  The Madeira had made the mussels a mauve-ish color that I chose to see as attractive. I plucked them out of their shells and put them in a bowl.  There were very, very few of them.  Good thing I have a big old hunk of lamb in the fridge to tide us over.  I mixed them with olive oil, lemon juice, shallots, pepper, and no vermouth or parsley, and let them sit for half an hour. Eric wanted to watch some godawful show about soldiers in Afghanistan, it was the most annoying piece-of-shit propaganda I’ve ever seen, very depressing. We ate the mussels with hunks of bread, and they were good.  The Madeira didn’t sully the taste at all, and despite the many open shells, they tasted mild and fresh and not at all like Port Aransas during man-o-war season. (Oh, aside here, someone yesterday was “floored” by Eric’s reference to Luby’s – why certainly we know Luby’s, every self-respecting Central Texan does.  My favorite always was a Luann platter of fried fish with a double order of fried okra, and red jello.  Also, I always got a peppermint patty when we checked out, and got to take the change from the cool little cup at the side of the cash register.  Those were the days….) However, I would like to try this again with vermouth and parsley.  Also, Julia says you can mix them in with some mayonnaise, which I would have done if it weren’t for the fact that we cannot keep a jar of Hellman’s in the house, I swear to god Eric’s coming home in the afternoon and eating it with a spoon. All the other food was good leftover stuff.  The lamb had gotten a tad dry, but the gnocchi had held up remarkably well. And, forgive me god, we watched “Are You Hot.”  We thought we had to, just once.  It made me want to kill myself.  I guess you know you’re getting old when you start saying the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, but seriously…. 8:00:25 AM    comment []